Archive for October, 2009

“My work humorously looks at charged situations, from gender and desire, to politics and idealism. I am deeply influenced by the history of printmaking and medieval engraving in particular, including the artists Martin Schongauer, Breughel the Younger, and Ishrael Van Meckenhem. Their work has a connection to contemporary comics (which I also love) but the irony and social commentary is more difficult to unpack and appealingly problematic.” Jenny Schmid is an assistant professor of printmaking at the University of Minnesota. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including a recent solo show at the University of Arizona Museum of Art, and published by Cannonball Press, White Wings Press, Egress Press, and Slugfest Printmaking. She is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including the Fulbright grant to study in Slovakia, and her prints can be found in the collections of The Royal Museum of Fine Art, Antwerp; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Detroit Institute of Arts; and Spencer Art Museum, University of Kansas, among others. Schmid received her MFA from the University of Michigan in 1996.

“How can sculpture and performance affect the viewer in a deep, personal way? How can the viewer be moved from a passive position to a state of engagement and communal experience? I’ve been working with these concerns since I started graduate school, and my practice has transformed from studio artist to include collaborator, facilitator, and producer as I investigate these questions… My current role as curator/facilitator/producer at Machine Project has allowed me to expand the scale and approach to these ideas. Working directly and collaboratively with gallery artists such as Jessica Hutchins, Brody Condon, David Burns, and Matias Viegener, I facilitate and produce ongoing investigations in these questions. Under my direction, Machine functions as a research laboratory-investigating performance, sculpture and installation as lived experience for the viewer.” Mark Allen is best known as the founder and director of Machine Project, a groundbreaking and critically lauded experimental art space in Echo Park. Since 2004, Machine Project has organized innovative workshops, screenings, concerts, lectures, parties, and exhibitions of installation and performance-based art. In 2008, Machine Project was invited to orchestrate A Machine Project Field Guide to LACMA, 10 hours of site-specific events and performances at the museum. In 2009, they will be the resident artists at the Hammer Museum. Allen received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 1999 and his BFA from Skidmore College in 1993.

“Somewhere along the line we’re supposed to figure out that one medium can’t do another’s chores. For instance, a written artist statement can’t stand in for a performative song and dance number. And yet the attempt, however clumsily made or especially if it’s clumsily made, can be better than if everything played its assigned role, spoke its own language, did what it was best at doing.” Brian Bress is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work includes collages, photographs, videos, and paintings. In addition to an upcoming show at Cherry and Martin in Los Angeles, Bress has had solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. He has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Against The Grain (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 2008), California Video: Artists and Histories (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008), LA Weekly Biennial 2006, Supersonic 2006, and GLAMFA 2006. Bress’s video work has been screened at festivals throughout the world. He received his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2006 and his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 1998.